Thursday, April 9, 2009

Article on my Collage Art by David Cotner

Someone has taken notice of my hand cut hand glued collage art - and wrote about my art in 'THE Magazine': Magazine Of and For the Arts - a printed art magazine with an online version as well.

A VERY KIND THANX to David Cotner for his article on my work...

(read below image)

Danger = (Dan Wininger)

Life is Sucking the Life Out of Me - Group Show @ Show Cave
1930 Echo Park Avenue, Los Angeles

www.showcave.org

Life is Sucking the Life Out of Me - by David Cotner

Danger Dan -- née Dan Wininger, scion of the Amok Books empire -- unveiled ten new hand-cut, hand-glued collages as part of Show Cave's Life is Sucking the Life Out of Me group exhibition.

The first impressive thing was how deeply seamless they all are. The second impressive thing: skulls, lots of skulls. These are animal skulls, reduced to their essence, culled toothless from the killing fields. The overall effect is too-much and not-enough all at once.

In Danger Dan's world baby chicks share space with torch-carrying men in red hoods emblazoned with crucifixes, bat-winged armadillos fly through the universe, and nubile teens contemplate the corpse of a two-headed baby ablaze while navel-gazing the sun.

Surprisingly, Wininger's collages are smallish -- most not much larger than 9 by 12 inches -- yet their impact is considerable. They seem equal parts revolting nightmare and boisterous fever-dream. They're chaotic and bizarre. Wininger is by nature an enthusiastic and hyperactive man; his sitting still long enough to piece these collages together is almost as unbelievable as the visions he conjures. But his approach is touched by neither menace nor insincerity in its embrace of the macabre.

Perhaps the closest thing to a self-portrait -- if that is in fact either the word or the point -- is a shrouded woman half-submerged in a hole in an ornately tiled floor. Her fist cradles her head in repose or despair, it's not clear which. Driftwood creeps in on one side while a centrifuge hovers overhead. That any of the devices in the picture may be readily available to help mankind is immaterial; what's comforting instead is the presence of nature and entropy. Something strange is coming, Wininger promises through his collages, so you should stick around and see what happens.